AUTONOMY OF THE SPIRITUAL ORGANISATION 529 



The example of France is a case in point. The Law of Separa- 

 tion, passed by Parliament in December, 1905, provides that the 

 churches and buildings belonging to them shall, within the space 

 of one year from the promulgation of the law, be placed in the 

 hands of associations cultudles, or associations for public worship, 

 of which the Bishop in every diocese is to be the head ; but the 

 Law of Separation further provides that the financial affairs 

 of these associations cuUueUes shall be under the control of the 

 State. Thus the State, although it has declared that hence- 

 forth it ignores the Church, claims the right to retain the control 

 of the finances of the Church. This is a flagrant violation of 

 the rights of the Church. The State no more possesses the 

 right to control the finances of the Church than the Church 

 possesses the right to control those of the State. This provision 

 of the French Law of Separation constitutes a case of State 

 interference which nothing can justify, in the afiairs of the 

 spiritual organisation ; and this latter claims the common right 

 to be the master in its own house. ^ 



France, however, furnishes more than this one example of 

 unjustifiable State interference in the sphere of the spiritual 

 organisation. The Law of Association, passed in 1901, at the 

 instigation of Waldeck-Rousseau, already constituted a serious 

 violation of the Uberty of the Church, to say nothing of the 

 violation of personal Hberty further imphed by it. The right 

 of the Church to constitute reHgious orders — in other words, to 

 organise herself as seems best to her — ^is, we say, incontestable. 

 And, indeed, only political animosity and anti-clerical fanaticism 

 can possibly justify this placing outside the law of thousands 

 of men and women for the sole offence of Uving together, bound 



^ It is regrettable that the most authoritative newspaper in Great 

 Britain, the Times, should have been systematically furnished by its 

 correspondent in Paris with unfair and misleading reports conoerning 

 the real object and purport of the French Separation Law. The latter, 

 far from being the law of liberty which one could have wished, being in 

 reality a law inspired by sectarianism and hatred of Clhristianity. 



34 



